


Have You Forgotten Yours?

by lillpon



Category: Grim Fandango
Genre: and what thoughts Manny would've had during it, idk I have a lot of feelings about the time between Year 1 and Year 2, just some feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22190452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillpon/pseuds/lillpon
Summary: On a quiet night at Calavera Cafe, Manny thinks back on the day he met Meche and his afterlife changed.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Have You Forgotten Yours?

It’s been a quiet night.

Soft murmurs are heard from the casino but the cafe is empty, save for Glottis improvising on the piano. He was right, he _is_ good with anything that has keys.

Manny sits at the bar as if he doesn’t own the place. There’s something about tonight. Sitting down with a full ashtray and an empty glass is not how he usually spends nights like these - more like the other way around. 

He can’t deny Salvador’s last message is probably the reason he’s like this tonight. Sal is apparently worried Manny has lost sight of the end goal, as if his reasoning to make this nightclub was just to enjoy shallow pleasures!

As if he hasn’t been thinking about Meche every day, hoping when she’ll finally appear in Rubacava, seeing Manny’s name on a neon sign will _at least_ pique her curiosity enough to come check. For whatever reason that might be - he’s never doubted she could be mad at him, still now. It’s his fault she’s been lost all this time.

Maybe she’s missed him, maybe she will just want to demand the ticket she was supposed to have received months ago… 

He sighs. It’s times like these that the last words he heard from her haunt him the worst.

_I’m sorry I let you down, Manny._

_You haven’t_ , he should have told her. _It’s not your fault. We’ll figure it out._

Should have, would have, could have…

And some of his first words out of his mouth, once he realized he couldn’t find the ticket she deserved, was his fear of getting fired. When that woman was facing walking the hardest path, deserved for the nastiest souls, after spending her whole - albeit short - life being kind and giving.

He grips the glass so hard he would probably break it if he still had muscles.

And Meche wasn’t even the only time he acted like this, though she was the most deserving soul he’d had in years. But even the less… “perfect”, souls, did they deserve it? Having their route to the Ninth Underworld treated only in the context of how much Manny himself would make out of it, Manny acting like they’re any random client instead of consoling them through their first moments of being _dead_?

Well, he was a businessman, not a psychologist, and after years on the job - and dead himself - he could say he was desensitized to death, no matter how untimely it was for each of his clients. But it was this cold, collected behavior of his that led Meche to take off on her own.

If he had just tried to comfort her, reassure her, think of her instead of himself for a moment… 

He reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out one of Sal’s earlier messages.

_You must be patient and let your heart remain open._

Heart. Funny word to use, despite how he feels a phantom pang right where it used to be as he reads the line.

_If it is meant to be, you will some day be reunited._

He wants to laugh. Sal immediately assumed… what he assumed about Manny, and Manny might have evaded immediately laying out his feelings in front of him, but in truth it was never about getting his job back. Not after facing the possibility of getting sprouted, at least. The Department of Death can rot - more - for all he cares.

But it’s his fault. Meche being alone and lost, facing a destiny she doesn’t deserve… and he simply wants to fix that. Nothing less, and nothing more.

The paper crinkles between his bony fingers, the word “heart” folds in two, and that phantom pang appears in his hollow chest again.

Maybe there is something more.

Even so. It doesn’t matter now.

**Author's Note:**

> Eeeeeeeeeek okay so I'm very nervous to post this, as it's my first time posting on a new fandom after being on one for like four years! But when I started playing this game I didn't expect to have my soul sold to it by the time I finished it, so what can you do, I sat down and wrote this.


End file.
